Graduate Student University of Texas San Marcos, Texas, United States
Overview: This qualitative study explores the families with young children’s experiences while trying to survive a hurricane. Four themes emerged which indicate the respondents’ unmet needs, challenges, coping strategies, and resilience amid natural disasters. In sum, practice and policy implications are suggested to improve the disaster management for the population.Proposal text: Background and
Purpose: Natural disasters have been long known to have immediate and lasting effects that disrupt the safety and wellbeing of individuals, families, and communities. It is also often found that members of socially vulnerable populations are disproportionately impacted by the economic hardship and altered community structure following a natural disaster (Smiley et al., 2018). In the face of natural disasters, children are considered especially vulnerable due to their physical, psychological, and developmental limitations that render them completely reliant on their caregiver for having their needs met and safety maintained. This level of reliance can cause additional distress for caregivers and caring for children during a natural disaster can greatly influence preparation, evacuation, and post-disaster decisions (Brodar et al., 2020). Between August 2017 and October 2018, many Florida caregivers would grapple with these struggles after the state was struck by two devastating hurricanes: Category 4 Hurricane Irma, and Category 5 Hurricane Michael.
Methods: To explore the barriers that parents with young children experienced after Hurricane Irma and Hurricane Michael, thirty-one semi-structured interviews were conducted between March and August 2019 in Central and North Florida. Participants were parents that experienced at least one of the hurricanes, Irma in 2017 or Michael in 2018, and had child(ren) between the ages of 0 and 14 years old at the time of the hurricane. The semi structured interviews explored challenges encountered surrounding caring for young children during response and recovery, coping strategies and resources used/available, and awareness and willingness to seek formal forms of support in future disasters.
Results: Research team members coded the data using content analysis to examine recurring patterns that emerged from the interviews. The team gained new perspectives on the vulnerabilities of disaster survivors and yielded four central themes including: taking care of family members during natural disasters; level of preparedness and coping with natural disasters; emotional distress during natural disasters, and financial challenges during natural disasters.
Conclusion and Implications: Study findings were consistent with many of the struggles expressed by caregivers in previous research. Many parents experienced stress surrounding making decisions that were in the best interest of their family, however, having limited income can exacerbate this stress highlighting the need of systematic support for low SES families in all stages of natural disaster response and recovery. The financial stress and the difficulty of having children in a shelter largely contribute to a family’s decision to not evacuate. Establishing shelters that are focused on caring for families and providing resources that meet their specific needs would be beneficial. Also, utilizing schools as an area for resources distribution and natural disaster education for parents and children could help prepare families for natural disasters before they strike. Schools have also been found to be an effective place for children to cope with the stress and trauma of experiencing a disaster. Findings from this study emphasize the importance of increased governmental and community support to this population through each the preparation, response, and recovery stages of a disaster.
